The present disclosure relates to semiconductor devices, methods of manufacturing the semiconductor devices, and electronic apparatuses and, in particular, to a semiconductor device, a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device, and an electronic apparatus capable of reducing an increase in the size of a semiconductor substrate in a case in which the concentration of an atom having a dangling bond terminating effect on the front surface of the semiconductor substrate is controlled for each region.
In a solid-state image pickup element such as a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) image sensor, it is important to reduce a dark current that causes degradation in image quality on the front surface of a semiconductor substrate.
A factor of the dark current lies in the fact that the interface level of the semiconductor substrate increases as a result of undergoing plasma damage such as a charge-up and UV irradiation by plasma processing such as CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) and dry etching in the manufacturing process of the solid-state image pickup element.
Accordingly, there has been devised a method in which the interface level is decreased with an atom such as hydrogen and fluorine having a dangling bond terminating effect on a device interface to reduce the dark current.
For example, there has been devised a method in which hydrogen is separated from a passivation film (SiN film) and coupled with a dangling bond on the front surface of a photodiode, i.e., the light receiving element of the semiconductor substrate to reduce the dark current on the front surface.
However, according to this method, hydrogen is supplied to the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate having a pixel portion and a peripheral circuit portion. Therefore, when a hydrogen supply amount is secured in the pixel portion, a hydrogen supply amount to the fine transistors of the peripheral circuit portion becomes excessive. This results in a surplus of hydrogen on the side of the front surface (device interface) of the semiconductor substrate and degradation in HCl (Hot Carrier Injection) and NBTI (Negative Bias Temperature Instability) resistance.
In order to address this, there has been proposed a method in which the remaining hydrogen amount of the passivation film serving as a hydrogen supply source is made different between the pixel portion and the peripheral circuit portion to allow the separate control of a hydrogen supply amount to the front surface of the semiconductor substrate (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-188068).